Chapter 1 #2
A doctor appeared in my vision as he momentarily flashed a light in one of my eyes. Then, he flashed the light in the other eye. “Eyesight looks good. We’ve put you on a sedative, Mr. De Luca, but we need you to remain still.”
At least I could see. Blindness in a situation like this would have just further agitated me.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even fucking nod. My eyes darted around, panic rising as I fully grasped just how trapped I was. There was no way out. I was at the mercy of these doctors.
That was when I saw her face. Valentina. My Valentina. Her blue eyes found mine, blonde hair fanning her beautiful face like a halo. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t deserve this woman after what I’d put her through, yet here she was. Making sure that I didn’t face this alone.
Her presence calmed me enough to get me to lie still. Somehow her beauty had managed to calm whatever beast in me had been fighting to get out. Without her, I would likely have succumbed to my condition in that place. She was the oxygen I needed to go on.
Suddenly, I felt her hand on my forearm. It slipped down to hold my hand. Her touch soothed my soul. I gazed up at her, wishing I could signal my gratitude to her.
“You’re in good hands here, Mr. De Luca,” the doctor was saying. “We’re lucky that your wife got you here just in time.”
My wife. Confused, I searched Valentina’s dazzling blue eyes, trying to find an explanation in those depths.
Something knowing flashed in them. Not an answer or anything that I could understand.
But somehow, I guessed that she was signaling for my patience.
She would reveal everything once we were alone.
Understanding that much at least, I squeezed her hand. It was the only way I knew to thank her.
The doctor continued speaking while a nurse replaced the IV fluid bag that was feeding the vein in my arm.
“His burns are superficial, so right now our biggest concern in the smoke inhalation,” the doctor explained. “As you informed us, Mrs. De Luca, your husband has experienced smoke inhalation before, so we want to take extra precautions. It’s important for us to get him breathing on his own.”
Valentina nodded and squeezed my hand. “When will he be able to breathe on his own?”
The doctor frowned. “I can’t say at the moment. Breathing is essential, obviously. And without it...”
Without it, I would die.
I saw the concern flash in Valentina’s eyes, but she didn’t let go of my hand.
She held on. Though I didn’t understand everything that was happening, I trusted her more than I had ever trusted anyone.
As a Romano, she had every right to want to see me dead, and yet, I believed that she was my only chance at survival.
Trusting her meant putting my life in her hands and knowing that, I wasn’t going to hesitate.
If my life depended on my enemy, then so be it.
These were the cards I’d been dealt. I’d see this through to the end, whatever came our way.
As long as she was with me, I could face my fate without fear.
“We have to let the treatment take its course,” the doctor added. “We’ll know more after the first round of it. For now, it’s vital that we get him as much oxygen as possible in the hopes that he’ll be able to breathe without relying on the tube.”
Valentina sat down next to me then, never letting go of my hand. “I’ll be right here.”
“The sedative should be taking effect soon,” the doctor told her. “We don’t want him exerting too much energy, so it’s crucial that he gets as much rest as possible.”
Already, I could feel the darkness closing in. Valentina was disappearing. Everything was beginning to fade away.
Strength left me, my body slowly going limp. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, fragments of memories flashed in my mind.
There had been a previous fire not too long ago. A warehouse fire that nearly killed me. Valentina’s family had set it to send a warning to my family. They’d set the fire, believing that our warehouse was empty at that time of night. It wasn’t empty. I had been there with another person.
When the fire in the warehouse blazed all around us, we’d barely managed to escape with our lives.
That warehouse meeting had to remain a secret, which was why no one in my family knew that I’d disappeared that week not to waste it on women and gambling, but to get treatment for the smoke inhalation.
No one in my family could know what that meeting in the warehouse had been about.
If anyone in my family found out—my father, my brothers, my mother—I would have been done for.
My family had zero qualms about doling out violent punishment, or worse for any perceived transgression if it was big enough.
And my transgression had been of the worst kind.
I’d been there, secretly betraying my entire family.
My family hadn’t known that I’d been in that warehouse, yet I’d told Valentina about my presence during one of our bitter arguments.
It had rattled her to know that her family had almost killed me by accident.
But even though Valentina knew I’d been in the warehouse during that fire, she had no idea why I’d been there that night.
If I died now, the secret about that warehouse meeting would go to the grave with me.
No one in my family would ever know about it.
And my fiancée would never know it’s true aims. The thought of dying without telling a single loved one the truth made me fear that not one single person on earth would truly know the real me.
They would go on believing that the only version of me they had ever known was all there was.
While my family might try to maim me, or worse, if the truth came to light, there was still Valentina.
The fiancée who must have believed she’d seen the worst version of me.
A man with no redeeming qualities. A man who’d used her.
A man who didn’t care. Maybe I had no redeeming qualities, but I cared for her so deeply that I was desperately hanging on to life so I could tell her everything.
Not just about my motives during that meeting in the warehouse, but my true feelings for her now.
I had to live long enough to get the truth to her.
Then, she’d know who I really was. Whatever happened after that, at least one person in the world would understand the man I’d truly been.
But the only way to get the truth to her was to get the doctors to remove the breathing tube.
That was my one and only goal. This was now a fight to survive so I could tell the one person I trusted the whole truth.
I just had to live long enough to tell Valentina everything I had been keeping secret.